


Learning Curve

by pipisafoat



Series: Harry Granger [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Dueling, Friendship, Gen, Gryffindor Evan Lorne, Gryffindor Jack O'Neill, Halloween, Head Boy Jack O'Neill, Head Girl Elizabeth Weir, Hogwarts, Hufflepuff John Sheppard, Logic, Marauders, Memories, Prefect Daniel Jackson, Prefect Sam Carter, Ravenclaw Daniel Jackson, Ravenclaw Sam Carter, Slytherin Elizabeth Weir, Teaching, Tutoring, lycanthropy, newts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9770699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipisafoat/pseuds/pipisafoat
Summary: Remus's time as a temporary Defense Against the Dark Arts professor gets interesting when he bonds with his shamefully small seventh-year class.(requires no knowledge of Stargate canon, for those who are reading Harry Granger. for those who aren't reading Harry Granger, end notes contain all the information you need to know for this story to make sense. OR you could read Harry Granger!)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to my pal percygranger for title help that turned into amazing beta work that doubled the size of this fic. Further thanks to AJ, ignitiondorks, and notallbees for wars, encouragement, and ideas.
> 
> This fic started as an exercise for getting past this chunk of time and into the next, then used some Stargate names just so I could make a fandom joke, then accidentally became a full-blown crossover. It also has spawned a new series that has at least one more story coming soon.

“Good morning, students.” Remus pushes himself off of the doorframe to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and steps to the opposite side of the hallway, surveying the group approaching with sadness. Seven students. No others had been able to pass the Defense OWL, and only one of these had gotten higher than an Acceptable. He wishes briefly that he were doing this longer than temporary, because he doesn’t _care_ what score someone got on their OWL. Defense is, to his mind, the most important class except for Charms for an adult wizard to have mastered at least the basics of. He’ll have to talk to the new professor about opening the class to more students, but they might still refuse to do it. He has a month or two to figure it out before the Board of Governors hires a full-time replacement, at least. “Your lesson awaits in the classroom.”

The seven students take in his hand gesturing toward the doorway and walk straight into the classroom, and Remus winces internally. Mistake number one. He’d even posted a piece of parchment on the door telling them to check the room before entering, but they hadn’t done it. He moves back to the doorway and leans a shoulder against it without entering the room.

“Hey!” one of them exclaims, staring down at where her hands used to be, but tentacles now hold her book bag.

“Hello,” Remus replies mildly.

“What did you do to us?” Two boys are back to back and unable to detach themselves from one another.

“My wand is in its holster,” Remus tells them, raising his right sleeve to show them. “I have not touched it since I said good morning to you, nor have I placed any charm or curse on you.”

“Thestral shite,” spits a boy whose brown hair is now host to a bed of snakes, hissing.

“Five points from … Slytherin, I’m guessing, based on the hairstyle?” Remus has to work to keep his mild and neutral mask in place at his own joke; he can clearly see the Hufflepuff tie. “That sort of language is not tolerated in this school, and seventh years like you should know that.”

A girl who had reacted calmly to the growth of two extra arms that only seem to want to poke her in the face finally draws her wand. “Is it safe to assume we’re allowed to use magic?”

Remus actually feels his mouth gape open. “What? Why on Earth wouldn’t you be allowed to use magic to defend yourself or reverse these spells? There’s no other way to deal with them other than by showing what you’ve learned!”

“Impedimenta,” the girl casts, pointing her wand at first one extra arm, then the other before turning it on the boy whose hair was modified. “Cameron, hold still before those snakes drive me barmy. Silencio. Can you still talk?”

“Lala- Yes, apparently.” He shoots Remus a look that would probably be anger or disgust if it weren’t disguised by fake professorial respect. "How do we get rid of them?”

She shrugs and turns to the rest of her classmates. “Silence, freeze, or otherwise make your issues less annoying, then we’ll have to look up how to get rid of them. Jack, Daniel, stop fighting your attraction and just share a chair for now."

The two boys stuck back to back were the first through the doorway, Remus knows, because he’d assumed the best researcher would be among the first into the classroom and the most handicapped by being attached to someone else. He recognizes Jack O’Neill, the Gryffindor Head Boy who looks quite similar to the hero on Sam Granger’s favorite television show, and the other is a Ravenclaw prefect whose name Remus really ought to have known before the girl called him Daniel. They take shuffling steps to get to the closest chair, and Jack shoots Remus an undisguised dirty look as the two perform one of the most hilariously awkward maneuvers Remus has ever had the pleasure of witnessing to sit down while connected from buttocks to shoulders. 

The girl with the extra arms - and Merlin, he wishes the class rosters came with pictures, because he has no idea who anyone is - marches up to the front of the classroom and spins a chair around to sit facing her classmates. Her Head Girl badge catches a ray of sunlight from the window and he struggles but can’t come up with her name despite his best efforts. Johnson, maybe?

“Sue, take your book to Jack and let him turn pages for you. Amanda, join her. You three look in the first third of the book for solutions. Sarah, join Daniel and take the middle third. Cam, you’re with me on the final third of the book.”

None of the other students reply, but they all move to do as they’re told. The girl with tentacles for hands - Sue - appears all too happy to drop her bag on Jack’s lap and let him handle anything that needs fingers. Amanda nearly trips over her still-growing feet as she joins them, electing to sit with her back to them to allow her feet to grow out into the aisle instead of into their way. Jack makes several smart remarks but ultimately holds Sue’s book and turns the pages good-naturedly.

All in all, Remus sees that the Head Girl has effectively organized her classmates into teams, and they’re scouring their books for any clues what he did. He makes a mental note to give her points for good leadership at the end of class, but he knows how disruptive it can be to the thought processes to have the teacher interrupt during research.

“Hang on a second, Elizabeth,” the girl working with Daniel says finally. “Tutor Lupin is still in the hallway. There’s a reason he hasn’t come inside.”

Oh, yes, points for her, too. He thinks he remembers seeing a Ravenclaw tie on her before she became weighted down by a large number of conjured necklaces covering the entire length of her neck. She probably was the first to notice him because she’s facing the door to work with the prefect as well as struggling to bend her neck enough to see her book.

“ _Professor_ Lupin, Sarah,” the organizer girl - Elizabeth - says. “Professor, would you mind joining us in the classroom? We would benefit from your enlightened guidance.”

Remus laughs. “You’re Slytherin, aren’t you? I’m going to say two things for the record. First, that won’t work on me, because I’m not enlightened, just easily amused. Second, I don’t mind if you call me Tutor or Professor; either title is fine, since I’m just a temporary professor but plan on tutoring the Grangers for the next seven years. Oh, and also, I’ll enter the room if you all close your eyes and cover your ears first.”

“Sure,” the Gryffindor of the boys stuck together agrees. His Ravenclaw counterpart reaches back and blindly slaps him.

“For some reason, I don’t quite trust you,” Remus comments, dropping his wand from its holster into his hand. “Ah, well. If you’re just going to peek, you may as well go ahead and watch.” He takes a deep breath as everyone twists awkwardly to watch him, visualizes the shield charm and temporary ward neutralizer he wants to cast, and throws them both out as quickly as he can. The war that originally birthed his fast casting has been over for ten years, and he doesn’t duel on a regular basis, but one of the perks of being a werewolf is enhanced speed when he calls on it. The students look amazed at his almost blurry wandwork and nearly incomprehensible incanting, and Remus smiles smugly as he makes his way through the room.

“I saw a shield and something else,” Sue reports to her classmates, trying and failing to turn the page in her book using her tentacles. Remus reaches down and flips it for her, causing Jack to startle out of his thoughts and give them both an apologetic look. “Thanks.”

“Shields don’t make sense,” Elizabeth argues. “They block spells. Nobody was casting a spell. He cast a shield first to make it harder to tell what he was actually doing and to throw us off his trail.”

Brilliant reasoning and the correct conclusion. Remus is tempted to award points for it, but he wants to let them finish solving the problem before he lets on that they’re earning anything for it.

Cameron, the Hufflepuff with snakes in his hair, chimes in next. “I caught the wand movement, but I haven’t a clue what he said or what it does.” He pulls his wand and does a very close job of mimicking Remus’s casting. The man grins and comes up beside him.

“Longer downstroke with a slight curl to the left at the end,” he corrects, demonstrating at a more normal speed for the class.

“Like this?” The Ravenclaw portion of conjoined boys attempts the wandwork, and Remus nods. “Fantastic. Have you heard of the Frasier Search Spell?”

Remus frowns as he wracks his brain. “No, I haven’t. Would you teach the class?”

Daniel tries to stand, then groans. “Jack, I’m going to need you to stand up.”

“No way, Daniel. I just got comfortable. Besides, I won’t be able to see it if you demonstrate now!” Jack responds, and Daniel sighs.

“Fine. Professor, can I teach everyone after we’re all cured?”

Remus agrees easily but watches as Daniel flips to a blank page in his textbook, casts a spell, and then traces the wand movement of his ward neutralizer onto the page. The book quivers, then starts flipping pages. Daniel grabs a spare piece of parchment and rips a couple small slips off, dropping them into position every time the book pauses on a page. After a moment, there are four pages bookmarked, and Daniel grins up at Remus. “Those are pages that have similar wandwork on them.”

“Wow,” Remus says with feeling. “I wish I’d had that in school.”

“If any of those have ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ vowel sounds in that order, that’s what I think I saw,” the up-until-now silent Amanda says quietly. Remus wonders if she’s noticed that her feet still haven’t stopped growing; they now reach the full depth of her desk and halfway into the aisle in front of her.

“Got it!” Daniel exclaims excitedly. “It’s a generic temporary ward neutralizer.”

“Great,” Sarah groans. “Now we know how we should have come through, but not how to get rid of the effects.”

Cameron smacks himself in the forehead, hitting a fair few snakes in the process. Despite being silenced, they writhe agitatedly at the harsh treatment. “Finite Incantatem,” he pronounces, pointing his wand at Jack and Daniel. Jack springs up from the chair, alone and unattached to any classmates, grinning at his Ravenclaw classmate when he turns around to face him for the first time since entering the room. “Are we really that dumb?”

Remus grins as the students cancel each other’s enhancements and makes his way to the front of the room to lean against the teacher desk. “Muggles have a saying you might want to think about for the future,” he begins as they settle into their seats and pull out parchment and quill to take notes. “The simplest answer is often the correct answer. If it’s not the answer, it’s unlikely that trying something simple is going to add to your problems in most cases. Lower level classes would try to finite a lot sooner in this case than you did. Why do you think that is?”

“Because we’re idiots?”

“Five points from Gryffindor, Jack,” Remus replies instantly. “In my classroom, you don’t call any student, including yourself, anything negative.”

Jack blinks, then nods.

“Because we’ve been trained in school to believe that we’re always going to be tested at the highest level of knowledge that we have,” Sarah offers.

“That’s probably part of it, Sarah,” Remus acknowledges. “Anybody else have any ideas?”

There’s a long silence before the girl who’d had tentacles raises a hand. “We start to discount basic spells as being less powerful or less effective as we learn more things?”

Remus grins. “Good … what’s your name?”

“Sue Jamison.”

“Good, Sue. If we’re discounting those basic spells, why?”

“Power,” the Head Girl responds when Sue doesn’t answer quickly.

“Can you elaborate on that, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth smirks. “I’m a Slytherin. We’re known to be ambitious. We want power. We’re going to turn to more powerful spells. Gryffindors probably want more powerful spells so they can be more noticed - don’t look at me like that, Jack, you know I’m right - and Ravenclaws are so wrapped up in knowing more that they’re going to want to use more specialized spells to show off their knowledge. I think it’s actually very telling that it was a Hufflepuff who thought to use the basic spell.”

“Hey!”

“Not an insult, Cameron,” Elizabeth says in a bored tone.

“No, but an interesting commentary on the nature of the Houses,” Remus remarks. “Cameron, that was actually a compliment. The other Houses are too wrapped up in themselves to consider using a simple spell that got the job done, while Hufflepuff is known for working hard and caring less about how they’re seen for putting in that work. If you want results, go to Hufflepuff.”

“Hey!” a different boy complains.

Remus rolls his eyes at Jack. “Are you trying to tell me it wasn’t a badger who got the job done?”

“Well, no, but-“

“I was a Gryffindor,” Remus interrupts. “I can say with absolute certainty that what Elizabeth described about our House was true in my day, and I can’t imagine it changing that much since then. The lesson to learn from her analysis of the Houses’ approaches to problem solving is how to overcome the innate shortcomings of your House, as well as how to work together with other Houses to solve the problem. On that note, I want to give each of you five points for working together earlier, with an extra five points to Elizabeth for organizing the mob, five more points to Elizabeth for finding a simple way to subdue the problems so you could focus on solving them, five points to Daniel for that spell, five points to - I’m sorry, you’re Amanda?”

The girl who had been plagued with growing feet smiles at Remus. “Yes, sir.”

“Five points to Amanda for impressive lip-reading, five points to Cameron for catching the wand movement so closely, and finally ten points to Cameron for coming up with Finite Incantatem. Daniel, you’ll get ten more points when everyone in the class knows the spell you used.” Remus thinks for a long moment, then nods. “If you think you should have earned points for something earlier - or if you ever think that in my class - let me know and I’ll consider it. If you ask for points repeatedly without having done anything to earn them, you’ll lose points, but if you honestly believe you’ve earned them, I want you to have them.

“Now, I want each of you to think about Elizabeth’s analysis of the Houses, identify a shortcoming in problem solving that applies to you or your House as a whole, and tell me a way you can make up for that shortcoming as well as what House you think best complements yours - that is, where each House is taking up the slack the other naturally leaves. Think about it for a minute, then we’ll discuss it.”

The discussion ends up being very interesting, and Remus takes some notes for his own consideration that he hadn’t thought of, either. As the end of the class period draws near, Jack raises his hand.

“Sir, what does any of this have to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

Remus smiles, having been waiting for that exact question. “Do you know the breakdown of scores from your OWLs? I mean which sections you did more strongly in and which caused you more problems?” Most of the students shake their heads, but Daniel nods with a look of slowly dawning comprehension. 

“I don’t have individual scores, don’t worry, but I do have a breakdown of everyone in your year who took the test and of the few who passed the OWL all combined. There are several parts. You all did okay on the theory of spells, okay on the application of spells, and dreadfully on the critical thinking of when to use what spells. I can’t make up for years of shoddy teaching. I can’t teach you every spell in existence. What I can do is teach you the skills to choose a spell in a situation. If someone’s attacking you, I don’t care if you know exactly how a spell works. I don’t care if you know about the textbook choice of spell, because if you can’t cast it, knowing about it doesn’t help you at all. What matters is that you know what spells you can and can’t use, what tactics you can and can’t use, and then that you are able to think critically - and quickly - to choose a spell you know that will get the job done in the situation, even if it’s not the most beautiful or classic choice. I won’t be with you for long, but if I can get you all _thinking_ , that’s good enough for me. Once you start thinking, you won’t stop. Especially if the seven of you make a commitment to yourselves and to each other. Keep thinking even after I’m not the one teaching you. Challenge each other to think.”

“How do we do that?” Jack asks.

“Class, one of your classmates just posed a question that requires thinking. How will you challenge each other?”

Elizabeth raises her hand, and Remus waves at her. “This is a discussion, not a lecture.”

“We can come up with scenarios and challenge each other to find ways to act.”

“That’s a good way, but the rest of you, what else can you do?”

“Actually attack each other and make them react?” Cameron suggests with a grin.

Remus can’t help it; he laughs. “That is not something I can officially condone, because fighting in the corridor isn’t allowed, but a dueling club is a school-sanctioned way to do that, yes.”

“Make teams and work together with different combinations of people to react not just on our own but taking into account other people’s abilities?” Daniel counters.

“Think outside the box, guys,” Remus encourages just as the bell rings. The students don’t move. “Alright, next class, have more ways you can challenge each other’s critical thinking. Remember that it doesn’t have to be just attack-and-defend scenarios. Critical thinking in any area will improve critical thinking for Defense.”

“Thank you,” Daniel said, and each of the students echoed him as they packed their bags. The boy stops in the doorway of the classroom and turns back around to look at Remus. “Are we safe walking through here?”

Remus just smiles, and each of the students casts a quick ward-neutralizing charm as they walk through the doorway. He hadn’t intended to teach them any new spells today, but it seems they learned one anyway - ah, and he forgot to let Daniel teach his spell to the class; next time. He’s still more pleased with their discussion and thinking, though. A month or two with him won't be enough to make up for six years of bad teachers - and who even knows what the next professor would be like - but maybe it would give them enough of a boost to be able to go on their own from here, if necessary.

* * *

Voices approach him, quieting as the seven students of his seventh year class form a semicircle around him. Remus very carefully doesn’t move a muscle from his comfortable seat in a conjured armchair, feet propped up on a separate ottoman. He’s in the shade, but it’s a warm day and his sunglasses allow him to look surreptitiously around the group.

“Do you think he’s asleep?” Cameron whispers, looking like he wants to poke Remus’s toes to find out. Remus suppresses the urge to smile as the boy reaches out only to have his hand smacked away by his fellow Hufflepuff, Amanda.

“Don’t!” she hisses.

“Don’t what? I was going to … shake him awake!”

“By his feet?” Daniel asks, obviously amused. A leaf drifts down from a nearby tree to land in Daniel’s hair, and the boy brushes it away absently. “Sarah, you’re close to his shoulder.”

“Not a chance,” the other Ravenclaw returns.

Jack sighs. “For crying out loud, everyone.” He draws his wand and aims it at Remus, but a moment later it soars from his grasp and lands neatly in Remus’s lap.

The temporary professor grins inwardly at the control he worked so hard to get with his wandless wordless disarming spell. He’s been practicing for the past week, ever since he had the idea for this outside class.

“He’s awake,” Jack announces.

“He hasn’t moved,” Amanda replies.

“He has the upper hand,” Elizabeth interrupts. “For all that he wasn’t a Slytherin, he has a lot of our best qualities, and this is one of them.”

Remus disarms her with a thought as well, the wand soaring from her pocket to join Jack’s on his lap.

“Accio wands,” Cameron incants, only to find his own wand joining his classmates’ before he can complete the spell. “Ooookay. Who else has a plan?”

“Expelliar— Seriously?” Sarah glares at her own empty hand and then at the four wands now nestled together on Remus’s thighs.

A look of concentration crosses Daniel’s face, and Remus goes ahead and disarms the boy before he can try anything.

“He’s watching us behind those sunglasses,” Daniel announces. “How else would he know I was about to try a silent summoning spell?”

“Maybe he can sense magic building up for a spell?”

Remus barely contains the snort at Amanda’s idea and disarms her as well, grateful to the Grangers for letting him practice with them and their kitchen spoons all weekend.

“Sue, you’ve been particularly quiet,” Jack announces rather loudly. Remus tries to disarm her but doesn’t manage it. Hmm. He tries again and then a third time.

“I’m trying not to tempt the wrath of the lounging professor,” she replies at a much more moderate tone.

“I wouldn’t call it wrath,” Remus replies, still not moving. He’s too comfortable to bother getting up before he has to. “More a lesson in taking your safety for granted and in keeping your wand. Only one of you passed. Sue, would you mind returning your classmates’ wands and telling them how you kept yours?”

The sun reflecting off the castle makes it look almost white behind the smirking Slytherin girl. “I think they should find a way to get their own wands back. We _are_ seventh year students, after all. How hard could it be?”

Remus laughs. “Jack, you’re the brash Gryffindor of the group. Care to heroically return all the wands?”

The Head Boy eyes Remus warily, then looks down at his lap. “I … think this might be better left to the Hufflepuffs. After all, they’re the ones who get things done.”

“Really, Jack?” Daniel asks with amusement concealed fairly well. His voice sounds very much like Remus imagines his own would. “Professor Lupin, may we please have our wands back?”

“Of course you may, Daniel.” Remus finally moves, gathering the wands in one hand and passing them all to the Ravenclaw prefect who asked so politely for them. He pulls his sunglasses off with his other hand. “Sue, the second part of the question. Actually, no, wait. New plan, guys. Let’s call it a lightning round. No books, no notes, no discussion, no time to think of an elegant solution. First answer that pops into your head. How could you keep someone from disarming you? Amanda.”

The girl stares at him with wide eyes. “Um, well….”

“Too slow. Sarah.”

“Shield.”

“All the time?” he asks.

Sarah winces. “Maybe?”

“Jack, give me another idea.”

“Permanent sticking charm between your wand and your hand.” The Head Boy shudders. “Oh, ow, that’s a terrible idea.”

“Cameron,” Remus says.

“Can you enchant a wand so it can’t be summoned?”

Remus frowns and runs through all the wand lore he knows, which is admittedly not much at all. “No idea, but even if you can, that enchantment wouldn’t stop someone from disarming you, you dropping it and them picking it, them pulling it physically from your hand—“

“Enchant it against all of those things,” Cameron responds.

“Elizabeth, you’ve been disarmed. How do you get it back?”

“Wandless summoning spell,” the Head Girl replies quickly.

“Can you do one?” Remus shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter for a lightning round. It’s a solid answer, and you could learn to do it. Daniel, how else?”

“Runes.”

No. No way. “Elaborate,” Remus requests with a grin.

“You can carve runes onto your wand - er, there are a lot of rules about that but if you follow them you can do it - and you can use those runes for a lot of things. I’m sure you can do one for it to return to you when lost. For that matter, you can do one to prevent it being taken, the way Cameron was talking about enchanting. By the way, you can’t enchant a wand without runes. I have some runes on my wand, but I haven’t done everything I want to with the idea.”

Wow. Apparently Daniel is what Remus was at his age. “What do your current runes do?” Remus asks, burning with a desire to know how similar they are.

“My wand is blood-bound to me and won’t work for anyone else,” Daniel replies.

“Brilliant,” Elizabeth interjects as Remus feels his jaw drop.

“I did that my first week of seventh year,” Remus tells the class, and it’s Daniel’s turn to have his jaw drop.

“You didn’t.”

Remus grins. “I did. Over the next few months, I added to it until it can’t be summoned by anyone but me; can’t be levitated, moved, or touched by anyone not specifically approved by me; can’t be taken by disarming spells; and can’t be burned, bludgeoned, or snapped.”

“Ooh, I hadn’t thought of the last set,” Daniel says, grabbing a scrap of parchment from his pocket and a quill from his bag.

“Sue, did you use any of the ideas they came up with during the lightning round to keep your wand away from me earlier?”

“No, sir,” she replies with a smirk. “I’m interested in the runes ideas, but I didn’t do any of those. I have a holster enchanted against disarming and summoning, and I didn’t unholster my wand.”

“Aw!” Jack hits himself in the forehead. “I have an enchanted holster, too, but I had my wand out.”

Remus nods. “Holsters are really useful, but they only protect the wand while it’s in it. However, if your wand is protected but your holster isn’t, your holster can be summoned and your wand will go along, even if it is protected against summoning. Why, Amanda?”

“Because it’s not the target of the spell?”

“Precisely.” Remus looks around, then sighs, takes his feet from the ottoman, and vanishes it. “Sit.”

Jack, Amanda, and Cameron sit on the ground while the other four conjure a variety of chairs and sit on those. Remus grins at the clear House lines their behavior follows - the Slytherins and Ravenclaws found the instructions didn’t specify they had to sit on the ground and decided their instructor wouldn’t mind if they took the liberty of chairs, and the Gryffindor and Hufflepuffs followed the letter of the rule without stopping to think. More likely, the Gryffindor didn’t stop to think because he’s used to acting first, while the Hufflepuffs didn’t stop to think because they’re used to following directions without question. Remus watches as the seven look at each other, noticing the same House trend. Last week, they’d turned in their essays on how different Houses fit with each other, and they’re no doubt mentally revising those essays to add in this new information.

“For Friday, I want at least four ways you intend to keep your wand safe,” he instructs. “Next topic. Why are we outside?”

There’s a long moment of silence, then Cameron answers hesitantly. “Because you told us class would be outside today?”

“That’s the answer a first-year would give,” Remus tells him gently. “Try again.”

“The weather’s nice is probably a third year answer,” Cameron says, a distant look on his face as though he’s just thinking out loud. “There are spells you don’t want to show us inside, but you’re not spell-focused, you said. Different environment to learn to duel in? I don’t think that’s right, but I’m not sure what else.”

“You can nominate someone else if you really can’t come up with an answer, but pick someone you think will know.”

The Hufflepuff looks up at the four students seated in chairs, clearly discounting his fellow ground-seated students. “Er, Sarah?”

The Ravenclaw girl smiles down at him. “Sure, Cam. When I was a first year, a fifth year prefect told me that if I was ever stuck on an assignment to pack up my things and go sit somewhere else. Library, classroom, dorm, Great Hall, outside. A change of scenery stimulates your mind and lets you think in different ways.”

“Exactly,” Remus confirms. “You’re dueling today after all, Cameron, but it’s not going to be a typical duel. Down the hill by the lake, you’ll find a large circle divided into seven slices. You’ll each be restrained to one slice. Last one able to cast a spell wins.

“There are rules, though. I will have these rules the same for any duel: Nothing lethal, nothing illegal, nothing damaging. By nothing damaging, I mean it cannot have lasting effects or require a trip to the hospital wing to ensure no lasting effects. Any questions on that?”

Seven heads shake in the negative, and Remus smiles as he continues. “For this particular duel, we have a couple of more interesting rules to add. No disarming spells, no summoning wands if they’re touching the person at all, and everyone has to use transfiguration at least twice.”

The students look at each other with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Daniel looks like he’s anticipating the challenge, Jack excited for the duel, Elizabeth confident that she’ll win, Sue somehow both excited and resigned, Amanda and Sarah nervous about the transfiguration rule, and Cameron nervous about the entire idea.

“Come on, up!” Remus says, standing and vanishing his armchair in one smooth movement. “To the dueling circle!”

“Have you ever been in a duel like this?” Cameron asks Remus as the class heads toward the lake, and the professor shakes his head.

“Not once, but it’s sure to be fun.”

“Maybe for you,” Cameron mutters.

Remus laughs. “Definitely for me! Okay, pick your slice.”

“You said down the hill!” Jack objects.

“It is down the hill, just not all the way down,” Remus replies with a grin. 

The circle is almost entirely on the slope; only two slices have some flat ground in them. Jack and Amanda rush for those slices, and Remus keeps his face from changing. It’s more work to aim your wand uphill than downhill; he’d have chosen the higher ground. Elizabeth and Daniel end up at the two highest slices, Cameron between Daniel and Jack. Sarah and Sue get into a brief tussle over the last two slices, but Sarah wins the area beside Elizabeth, leaving Sue next to Amanda.

“Tell me the rules again,” Remus demands as he steps into the middle of the circle, pointing to Sarah first.

“Nothing lethal.”

He points to Sue. “Nothing illegal.”

His finger moves to Amanda. “Nothing damaging.”

Jack. “No disarming spells.”

Cameron. “No summoning wands touching a person. Is that their owner or any person?”

Ooh, nice question. “Their owner,” Remus decides on the spot. It’ll be more interesting if they start summoning wands someone else has already claimed, and it’ll give those with wandless summoning spells a chance to get back in the duel. “Daniel, next rule.”

“Use transfiguration twice. If we undo someone else’s transfiguration, does that count?”

“Sure,” Remus answers. “Elizabeth, define damaging for the purpose of my dueling rules."

“No lasting effects,” she replies, then continues when he keeps looking at her. “Can’t require a trip to the hospital wing to get rid of lasting effects.”

“Good. Everyone clear on the rules?” He spins slowly to take in all seven nods, then strides out of the circle between Sue and Sarah. He sets his wand to the edge of the visible line and murmurs a quiet spell that initializes the dueling wards he’d set up earlier. A shimmering dome forms around and over the circle, and Remus smiles in satisfaction.

“I’ll warn you now that the lines separating the slices are warded. They’ll let spells pass but not people; you’ll get a nice stinging hex if you try. Go ahead and take your favorite dueling position.”

Jack’s wand arm goes straight out in front of him, left arm curled up behind his head. Cameron’s wand arm lifts over his head, left arm in front of his chest as though to block spells. Daniel brings his wand to bear as though casting in class, a casual hold close to his chest, and his left arm moves away from his side slightly, fingers twitching in readiness. Elizabeth’s pose is close to Jack’s but her wand arm’s elbow is bent slightly to keep her wand closer to her. Sue looks at first glance as though she didn’t hear Remus’s instruction, but her eyes are darting around the circle, and there’s a tenseness in her muscles that wasn’t there a moment ago. Sarah holds the same pose as Cameron. Amanda looks around the group as though she’s never dueled before or seen the positions, which is entirely possible, and she goes with the same pose as Sarah and Cameron.

“Three, two, one, go!” Remus calls, trying to balance a quick start with not leaving the weaker duelers behind completely. 

He’s watching the whole scene but he can only really focus his attention on one or two students at a time; he makes a mental note to ask if he can borrow Albus Dumbledore’s pensive to really study his students’ styles so he can help them best. Despite her lax pose, Sue springs into action faster than any of the others, sending stunning spells at all six opponents before anyone gets a shot near her. Daniel, Amanda, and Cameron all cast shields first; Elizabeth drops into a crouch as she casts towards Amanda and lets the stunner fly over her head to impact the dueling dome; Jack’s own spell collides with the stunner in midair, canceling it out in a colorful miniature explosion; and Sarah drops unconscious.

Amanda cries out as the ground beneath her turns to ice, but she stops her slide just short of the edge of the circle and reverses the transfiguration. Jack sends a spell across to Sue, who leans just far enough to her right for it to pass by harmlessly as she returns her own spellfire. The two start exchanging hexes and jinxes at a very fast pace, dodging and ducking instead of shielding. Amanda takes a moment to get her bearings, the magic flying between Sue and Jack enough to shield her from the three on the other side of it, but she’s taken down before she can do anything else by a spell from Sue. Remus reaffirms his need for a penseive - he has no idea how Sue managed to send anything that way while also dealing with Jack. He heads uphill to get a better angle on the three on the other side of the furious battle.

Daniel appears to have a small army of grass-covered miniature trolls leaping up to intercept spells coming his way, and he’s shooting spells to either side of him in between repairing and creating new minions. Cameron seems to be benefitting from the trolls as well; Elizabeth is concentrating more on taking them out than on dealing with her human rivals. It proves to be her undoing; Cameron casts a flipping spell that lands her on her back on the ground, sliding downhill. Daniel summons her wand as she slides downhill. Elizabeth shouts as her foot slides over the line of her slice and jerks it back, stopping her downhill slide, but Cameron shoots a stunning spell that forces her to roll into the other side of her slice. As she cries out in pain again, Daniel sends a stunning spell with each wand, catching Elizabeth full on and knocking her out but only clipping Cameron. The partial hit seems to make Cameron a bit woozy, and his next spell flies wide and hits the top of the dueling dome.

Daniel restores his troll army, setting half of them to watching Cameron and the other half to guarding his front as he turns his attention to Jack and Sue, just barely starting to slow down their rapid pace. He watches for about fifteen seconds, by Remus’s estimate, then casts at the same moment as Sue, aiming low to ensure a hit. The bottom of her robes turn to stone, and she’s forced to duck and then lean awkwardly to avoid Jack’s renewed fire.

Another off-center cast by Cameron collides with one of Sue’s stunners inches in front of Jack, saving him from unconsciousness, but Daniel flings a full-body bind at Jack in the moment when he’s distracted by looking to the source of his brief salvation. A rope binding spell is intersected by another wild Cameron cast, but Sue finally lands a stunner on Jack, summoning his wand as soon as he’s unconscious. Remus winces as he watches the wand leave Jack’s hand, a clear violation of the rules.

Sue turns as well as she can with half-stone robes to erect a hasty shield as Daniel starts flinging double hexes with his and Elizabeth’s wands. Sue brings Jack’s wand to point at Daniel, her own sustaining the shield, and with a look of intense concentration, she sends off a stunner the barest moment before Daniel shoots two at her.

Daniel goes down unconscious, but Sue’s shield wavered and disappeared when she sent the stunner through Jack’s wand. She tries to recast, but the shield flashes up too late, and when Daniel’s double stunners impact her a millisecond later, the shield blinks back out.

Remus looks in interest at the way Sue’s forced to slump over half-stone robes before turning his attention to Cameron. The boy looks more than half drunk, stumbling into the side of his slice and jerking back with a loud yelp. He doesn’t appear to have a wand anymore, either, and Remus eventually spots it rolling to the edge of the lake. “Accio Cameron’s wand,” he calls, and yes, that’s the one. 

Hmm. His own rules said the last person to cast a spell wins, and Cameron shows no signs of being inclined or even able to do so. “Cameron!” he calls, and the boy turns to face him, slamming into the stinging ward as he does. “Can you cast a spell?”

“Hurmr,” the boy replies, falling down and not getting back up, though he’s moving enough that Remus knows he’s still conscious. That seems to be a no on casting spells though.

Remus walks around the circle, reviving everyone and reversing Jack’s body bind. He casts the reviving spell on Cameron as well, handing the boy his wand back when he looks alert again. He waits for Sue to finish returning her robes to their normal fabric state before he speaks.

“I can’t say anyone was a winner there,” he tells them. “Daniel and Elizabeth were the only two who followed the transfiguration rules. Sue broke the summoning wands rule. Cameron was the last person conscious, but he couldn’t cast a spell because of a half-stunner from Daniel earlier in the duel. Sue was the last person knocked out, but she broke two rules. Daniel followed all the rules but had two people conscious after him.

“What’s the next step you would take from here? Anybody answer.” Remus kneels to take down the warding as his students look at each other.

“I’d set up a four versus three situation,” Daniel offers. “Me, Cameron, and Sue versus the other four.”

“Good plan,” Remus tells him, surprised that the boy once again said exactly what Remus was thinking. “The line will run straight uphill, so sort yourselves onto sides and we’ll get that duel going."

* * *

“Lightning round!” Remus announces two and half weeks later, and his students’ books all snap shut almost instantly. He’s pleased with how well they respond to his ideas, and the concept of a lightning round has quickly become a favorite for them. “Jack! You’re in a room without your wand. How do you get out the door? Three ways.”

“Wandless Alohomora,” the Head Boy says quickly. “Wait, check to see if the door is locked, and if not, just open it and go through. Does that count as an option?”

Remus nods.

“And … uh, shout for help?”

Remus grins. “Shouting doesn’t get you out.”

“Then I nominate Daniel for the third answer.”

“Pick the lock with two quills,” the Ravenclaw prefect says immediately. Remus thinks about making him prove the answer, but the idea is sound (probably? Remus isn’t sure if a quill would hold up) and that’s all that matters during a lightning round.

“Elizabeth, disarm someone without using Expelliarmus. Four ways.” The Head Girl smirks in a way Remus instantly recognizes as her having been posed this exact question in the past. “No, send it to Sue.”

Sue looks over at her fellow Slytherin as though trying to get her to send the answer through Legilimency. “Summon the wand, banish the wand, stun them and take it from their hand, petrify them and take it from their hand.”

“Last two are too similar. Give me something different.”

She closes her eyes to block out the visual distractions of the room, and Remus is about to set off the time’s-up sound when her eyes fly open again. “Run at them screaming and yank the wand from their hand while they’re confused?”

A laugh bursts out of him before he can control it. “I like it,” he tells her sincerely. “Amanda, one spell on a door that will make me regret walking through it.”

“A glamour,” she responds instantly. “It looks like you’re walking into an empty room, but on the other side of the threshold there’s a deep pit with a devil’s snare in it.”

The thought flashes through his head wondering if she was in the third floor corridor, but it’s lightning round and he doesn’t have time to hesitate. “Sarah, you just walked through that door.”

“Levitation charm as soon as I feel myself falling.”

“Pit’s not that deep. You’re in the devil’s snare.”

 _Deadly fun but will sulk in the sun,_ he sees her tell herself silently. Probably not in NEWT Herbology if she’s using first-year rhymes. “Sunlight charm to drive the plant away, levitation charm to get out of the pit.”

“Error,” Cameron says quickly. “Levitation charms only lift, no sideways motion. Mobilicorpus should do it?”

“Daniel, keep them in the pit with one modification to Amanda’s setup.”

“Harm level?”

“No restrictions,” Remus answers, curious how lethal the boy will go.

“Ward the pit to stun people when they fall in.”

“No risk of death or permanent injury,” Remus replies.

The boy raises an eyebrow, and Remus nods at him. This is part two of the same question, in his mind, so it’s still Daniel’s responsibility to answer. “A metal grate charmed to fall over the top of the pit like a lid when someone casts a spell inside.”

“Error,” Jack calls. “Long periods spent in the pit with devil’s snare are automatically a risk of death.”

There’s a moment of quiet, then Remus grins. “Alright, Jack, you found the error, you fix it.”

“Oh, Merlin, someone kick me next time before I can open my big mouth. Okay, enchant the pit to alert someone to come if there’s a person in it.”

“Error!” Daniel says in a sing-song voice. “What happens if the person is asleep?”

“We make it loud enough to wake them.”

Daniel’s grin grows. “Maybe they choose not to come.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Daniel!”

Remus feels his own grin rivaling Daniel’s. “Answer it, Jack.”

“Fine. You could … add a charm … that keeps the plant from eating people? Holds them tightly but doesn’t crush them?”

“Error,” Elizabeth says, sounding downright gleeful. “Professor Lupin, even if the plant leaves the person in the pit entirely alone, they could die without food or water.”

“I assign a house elf to tend to the plant and any people trapped in the pit,” he answers easily.

“Oh.” She’s been trying to catch the professor in an error ever since he introduced this game, but he’s managed to stay a step ahead so far.

“Cameron, you’re in a room with three doors. Two will kill you if you walk through them. How do you get out of the room alive?”

“Jump out a window and use a levitation charm to drift safely to the ground.”

Ooh, Remus hadn’t thought of that answer. “Sarah, another way.”

“Can I summon a broom and fly out the window?”

He laughs. “Nice try. No more window. And you can’t get out through the floor, ceiling, or other windows, either. Deal with the doors.”

“Well, you’re no fun,” the Ravenclaw girl tells him with a grin. “Conjure mice and send them through each door to find out which door keeps you alive. Oh, and then walk out that door, if we’re being nitpicky.”

“Alternate proposal,” Sue interrupts. “Run through any door, since you said they kill you if you walk through them.”

“That is entirely too nitpicky, and I hope you never rely on that sort of logic if your actual life is in danger,” Remus says, half-serious.

Sue grins. “No, but it was worth it to see your face.”

“I think that’s a good note to end that round on,” Remus says, shaking his head but smiling despite himself.

“Class isn’t over!” Elizabeth complains, her classmates nodding and voicing their agreement.

Remus sighs. “I know, but I need to talk to you. This is our last class together.” He has to pause until their sounds of outrage die down enough for him to be heard. “The Board of Governors has hired a new professor, and he will be starting on Monday.”

“Who is it?”

“Why’d they move so fast?”

“I thought we’d have you for two months, not just one!”

Remus holds up a hand and smiles when they go silent right away. He hadn’t expected to tame seventh years this quickly. “The professor asked that his identity not be revealed to students until his arrival, and I’m going to respect his wishes. The Governors always intended to hire someone permanent as quickly as possible so Headmaster Dumbledore could focus entirely on his job, and I’ll still be in the castle. You all know where my office is, right?” The laughter he gets for this question is entirely deserved; each of them has visited at least twice and been duly impressed by the wall Professor Flitwick’s teaching him to charm with each new history lesson.

“Are you going to keep the same office hours?”

He thinks for a long moment. “Probably not, Sarah. You know my Granger times, and I’m usually there for thirty minutes or so after each session with them preparing the next.”

“Come on, Professor, we’ve seen how those two come back to the common room at all hours of the evening,” Daniel tells him, upset clear on his face.

“Okay. If classes have ended for the day, you can interrupt us politely, how’s that? And I expect each of you to keep up with your logic puzzles and to keep hitting each other with lightning round questions.” They agree easily, and Remus feels like he’s just dodged a killing curse. “Ask your professor with questions first, but if you need me, I’m still here for you.”

“Will they still let you attend the Halloween feast?” Amanda asks, and Remus controls the flinch at the reference to that godawful holiday. Ever since James and Lily and Peter died, he’s holed up and gotten completely pissed on Halloween, cried his eyes out and screamed himself hoarse at Black and eventually passed out. He had planned on coming up with some kind of excuse to go back to his temporary quarters and do just that on this Halloween, and now that he won’t be a professor then, he can go home to do it.

“It hasn’t come up,” he answers truthfully, avoiding her continued curiosity. Thirteen days until the anniversary of the worst night of his life. He can sidestep until then, surely. “I expect you all to work as hard for your new professor as you have for me, understood? If I hear of a single failed Defense NEWT, I’m hunting down all of you and putting you in each of those lightning round situations. If one of you fails, all of you are at least partially responsible. Stick together.”

They promise to do exactly that, and when the bell rings, instead of leaving the classroom as usual, they line up in front of Remus. Jack is first, and he offers his hand.

“Professor Lupin, you’re the best Defense professor we’ve had our entire time at Hogwarts,” he says seriously.

“If you’d been our fifth-year teacher, more of our classmates would be in this class,” Cameron adds with his own handshake.

Sue winks saucily at him. “Some of them would show up just for your looks, of course, but they’d stay for your lessons.”

Remus laughs and lets her kiss him on the cheek. “You should try flattery like that before I’ve put in all your grades,” he reminds her, and she shrugs.

“She’s right on both counts, though,” Elizabeth tells him, hesitating before leaning in and kissing his cheek too. “Though to be fair, have you seen our other professors? Who else among the men are we going to find attractive, Professor Binns?”

He can’t control a shudder at that thought. “Okay, I can take the compliment a little more seriously now.”

Amanda takes his hand instead of kissing his cheek, but she holds it with both of her hands for a long moment before speaking. “Thank you for believing in the quiet Hufflepuff girl,” she says softly, and he laughs so hard he almost falls off the edge of the desk where he’s leaning.

“Amanda, you may not say much, but all of us know your devilish mind is busy working when the rest of us are just chatting about nothing. It’s no leap of faith to believe in you.”

“Well, you expected that devilish mind before you even knew it was there.”

He shrugs. “I had a feeling, and I don’t accept less than someone’s best, quiet or talkative. You’re welcome, though.”

“You know how much you’ve done for me,” Sarah says without stopping to take his hand or kiss his cheek. “I went from failing a class with an incompetent professor to passing and holding my own under a professor with real standards. I don’t know if it’s learning how to figure out those damned logic puzzles or the quick thinking you force us to have for your lightning rounds, but my grades in all my other classes are improving, too.”

“I’ll take partial credit for making you think more often,” Remus replies with a grin, “but most of it is your own self-confidence.”

Sarah nods firmly, then smirks at him. “In the interest of proving my self-confidence, can I have a hug?”

It’s against the rules but not explicitly stated, and there’s an entire classroom full of witnesses to the fact that there’s nothing untoward happening, so he stands up and opens his arms. Sarah steps into his embrace easily and nearly squeezes his ribs to death, but he can’t do anything but smile at her when she moves away again.

“Can I have a hug, too, Professor?”

Remus’s smile explodes into a bright grin. He can’t quite tell if Daniel’s serious or joking, but he knows one way to find out. There’s a brief flash of surprise on the Ravenclaw prefect’s face when Remus’s arms open wide again, but he shrugs with an almost rueful grin and steps up to hug his professor. Remus is surprised when it’s not a reserved or back-slapping hug, but he gives as good as he gets and pretends he can’t see the tears threatening in Daniel’s eyes when the boy steps back.

“I think they’ve said it all, but I’ll say it again: You’ve been the best professor in so many ways, we’re really grateful to you, you’ll get tired of us dropping by to say hi, and … thank you. It doesn’t matter who the new professor is; we’re going to miss you.”

Remus blinks hard and nods firmly. “You’ve been an amazing class, I’m grateful to you for working with me so well, I’ll never get tired of seeing you, I’ll miss you too, and I’m proud of each and every one of you. Now get out of here before you’re late to your next class and my third-years catch me crying.”

He knows they split up to have Transfiguration and Charms next, not so far away that they’re in danger of being late even after an extended goodbye like that, but his third years are indeed starting to fill the corridor outside the classroom when his sevenths open the door and leave. As he turns to write the lesson for the third years on the chalkboard, he hears Jack addressing the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws before they can enter the room.

“I know it’s last block on Friday and you’re tired of classes, but we think Professor Lupin deserves all your attention today. Take care of him for us, yeah?” the Head Boy requests of the students, and the chorus of agreement warms Remus’s heart.

* * *

“Professor Lupin?”

Remus turns toward the door and grins. “Daniel! Hey, can you wait for just a minute?”

The boy nods and moves across the hall to lean on the smooth stone wall. Remus nods gratefully at him and turns back to Hermione. “You’ve gotten the order of operations mixed up again,” he tells the girl, who frowns at her paper. “'Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally', remember?”

“Parentheses,” she growls at the paper, and Remus eyes the pencil in her grip, unsure if he should rescue it before she snaps it or not. “Right. Thanks. God!”

He pats her shoulder, then rubs her back gently when he notices it relaxing her. “Don’t worry about it, Hermione. Everyone struggles with something. And there’s nobody here except me and Harry. You know neither of us think any less of you for mixing this up. You never judged Harry when he was struggling with long division, did you?”

The girl’s jaw flexes, but she nods and relaxes her hold on the pencil. “You’re right,” she agrees finally. “I’ll try to relax more about it, even when I mess up.”

“Good.” He pats her shoulder one more time and turns to check on Harry, but the boy is hunched over his paper, head nodding to the beat of something only in his head, pencil moving steadily. He slips out into the hallway and casts a sound-muffling charm on the doorway so his conversation won’t disturb his students. “What’s up, Daniel?”

The Ravenclaw boy smiles. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and Remus returns the smile at the sincerity in the boy’s voice. “I’m, uh, something of an ambassador for the whole class.”

“Oh, no. No. Daniel, please tell me you’re not here to….”

The boy shrugs ruefully. “Have you ever met Lockhart?”

“Professor Lockhart,” Remus corrects, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, Daniel, I know he’s a bit … colorful … but give him a chance.”

“Yeah, we did, and he’s not just colorful. The man couldn’t disarm me when I didn’t even use a shield. He dropped his wand twice and then disarmed Jack, who was standing on the opposite side of the room from me. He claims he did it on purpose, of course, and that dropping his wand was a way to lull us into a false sense of security, but….” Daniel sighs loudly. “Jack, Elizabeth, and I have enough money to pay for tutoring for all of us at the usual rate, and we want you,” he says in a rush.

Remus’s eyes fly open. “The entire seventh-year Defense class wants to drop the official class and get tutored by … by me?” he asks incredulously.

“Yes.”

He gapes and waves a hand around and makes a few completely unintelligible sounds before giving it up as a bad job and just closing his eyes to breathe deeply a few times. When he thinks he has enough of a grip on himself to actually function in a conversation, he tries speaking again. “You’ve only had him for a week.”

“Two classes of the man asking us to read his books aloud and act out scenes,” Daniel counters.

“That’s … one possible approach to learning strategy.”

Daniel snorts and takes a moment to visibly calm himself. “Yes, sure, if someone else were doing it,” he allows. “Lockhart - and no, I won’t call the man a professor - he’s criticizing our Yeti sounds and refusing to answer any questions about strategy. Sarah and Elizabeth got together and made a timeline of things from the dates given in his books that is actually physically impossible, but he says we must have gotten it wrong but won’t give the actual timeline ‘because you can find everything in my books’!” Daniel even makes the airquotes to go along with a passable impression of Gilderoy Lockhart’s voice. “I asked him how a blinding curse didn’t cause a Yeti to go on a murderous, if blind, rampage, and he started talking about his favorite flowers. He didn’t even use a blinding curse on a Yeti; that was the manticore! Though my question still stands,” the boy adds thoughtfully.

“That is a very good question, and proof that you’ve been keeping up with your challenges from me,” Remus replies automatically, not really sure what to say about Lockhart.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve finished all those logic puzzles you gave us. They’re really great! Do you have more?” Daniel shakes his head. “Stay on topic, Daniel. Anyway. Lockhart. He refuses to demonstrate a lot of the curses his books talk about because they’re dangerous - and sure, I can kind of see an argument for that, even though we’re NEWT students and there’s plenty of space outside to demonstrate on a tree or something, but the problem is, we asked him to tell us the incantation and show us the wand movements just so we’d know. He did, but the incantations were mispronounced, and when I searched for the wand movements, which took the library to find, they were all for beauty spells. Beauty spells, Professor! Beauty spell wandwork with slaughtered pronunciation for offensive and defensive spells. I actually tried them all the way he showed us, just in case, with the other six there to provide shields or whatever was needed. Half of them didn’t do anything, and the other half just put soot on my face and made my hair smell slightly singed.”

Remus winces repeatedly during this speech, culminating in a loud groan at the end of it. “That’s … maybe you misheard him?”

Daniel grins, but there’s no humor on his face or in his voice. “Yeah, I thought that might be the case, so we gave him one more chance. In his next class, I asked him to check if I had it right. Showed him the wand movements, pronounced the spells exactly the way he had. He made me promise not to try to use the spells - which I did without concern, because I have no intention of using the _actual_ spells - and then said I had it all right.”

“Oh. Well.” Remus bites his lip and glances back through his office door, but the Grangers are still working on their maths papers. “Obviously I don’t condone dropping Hogwarts classes.”

“We’ll hire you to tutor as extra learning. No mention of the current class or professor. Actually, if you’d be open to it, there are some seventh years who didn’t pass the OWL who would like to learn from you.”

“You should probably try to address the problem with the professor or headmaster first,” Remus tries. He can’t deny that he wants to teach them again, and how did Daniel know he wanted to help the others, too?

“Cameron is writing a letter for the Board of Governors. We’re meeting him after dinner to read over it and all sign it. I think we’ve got someone from every year in every House to sign it, too, at minimum.”

“I….”

Daniel smiles and holds out a hand to Remus. “Tutor Lupin?”

“Oh, Merlin help me,” Remus mutters, then takes Daniel’s hand. “Fine. I’ll teach everyone, but with help. You and the others who are taking Defense will meet me here tomorrow as soon as you finish breakfast, and any seventh year who’s interested will meet us as soon as classes are over for the day. I’ll let you know where.”

“You won’t regret it,” Daniel promises fervently. “If you can draw up a bill based on how many people come, Jack and I will figure out how to split it up."

Remus nods, then sets a hand on Daniel’s forearm to keep the boy there while he thinks about the cost. He makes enough from tutoring the Grangers to meet his needs now that he owns his bus-home outright, and he’s never been one to hoard money for the sake of money. "I’ll drop to half rates for everyone who didn’t make the NEWT class and needs help paying for tutoring. Defense is important enough that the money can’t matter."

* * *

Remus Lupin stands just inside the doorway and stares at the crowd of seventeen and eighteen year old students in the classroom and sighs. “Jack!” he says, snagging the Head Boy by the elbow. “Are there any seventh years who aren’t here?”

“Nope,” he replies, popping the p with a grin. “All twenty-seven of us are here. You ready?” Without waiting for an answer, Jack whistles piercingly, and the crowd is silent almost instantly. “So. Tutor Lupin.” 

Remus stares at the young man as he steps back and melts into the crowd. “Thanks, Jack,” he says with far more sarcasm than he’d intended. Sometimes he thinks the Head Boy is chosen not as a beacon of what the students should be but more as a what they all actually are: teenagers who are legal adults, eager to inflict themselves on the world outside of school but not actually mature enough to be really ready to do so. Well, he wants to teach them, but only those who really want to learn. As a tutor, he’s under no obligation to coddle them and keep them coming back to him. “I’m about to offend all of you,” he warns the crowd, “but it’s for a purpose. If you passed your OWL, come stand behind me. If you made a Poor, group together to my right, by the windows. Dreadful, in the middle of the classroom. Troll, to my left, against the wall.”

There’s quiet muttering as his former NEWT students wend their ways out of the crowd to gather behind Remus, then a girl in the remaining seventh years groans. “Oh, come on, he can’t help us if he doesn’t know where he’s starting,” she says. “I got a Troll, so if you’re standing on this wall and got higher, go away.”

The girl admitting to receiving the lowest possible score seems to break the ice for the rest of the students to finally sort themselves out. Remus is shocked when another student walks past him to join the group who passed their OWLs.

“Sam?” he hears Daniel ask and is absurdly grateful the boy is inquiring so he doesn’t have to.

“Yeah, I passed, but only barely, and it made more sense to concentrate on subjects where I was guaranteed a decent education,” the girl replies defensively. “And now you’ve given me an option for a decent Defense education.”

Ah. She must be a Ravenclaw. Or possibly a Slytherin - the Ministry looks more highly on fewer subjects with higher NEWT scores, so those with political ambitions frequently pare down to only four classes, the minimum allowed. “Thank you for letting us know your score, but I’m actually going to have to ask you to join the Poors, if you could. I’ve already talked to these seven about how they’ll help me sort the rest of the students.”

Sam’s face tightens, but she nods and steps back toward the group. Remus notices that she leaves a small gap between herself and those who actually scored Poor on the OWLS, and he doesn’t blame her. 

“Slytherin?”

Daniel grins. “Ravenclaw. I won’t tell her you got it wrong.”

“Eh, Ravenclaw was my first guess,” Remus allows. “Are all of you ready? Daniel, Amanda, Sue, take the Dreadfuls one room to the left. Elizabeth, Cameron, start with the Trolls one room to the right. Jack, Sarah, and I will start on the Poors here. Send green sparks to hover in the hallway if you need me at some point, red sparks into this room if it’s an emergency.” He turns to the waiting students and raises his voice. “Alright, wall students!” He points at the five students with the lowest score and gestures at Elizabeth and Cameron as they walk past those students and to the door. “You’re with these two. They are in charge and speak for me, but if you feel you’ve been somehow wronged, you’re free to leave at any time. Don’t come back if you leave, though. Window students, you stay in here with me and these two.” Jack grins and runs a hand through his hair as he and Sarah go to the seven leaning on windowsills and start dividing them into three groups. “The rest of you, go with these three.” Daniel and the girls with him herd the final eight out of the door.

“You two take three each and give me Sam,” Remus tells Jack and Sarah, and they exchange a glance before nodding and reassigning the groups they’d just finished. He gestures for Sam to wait a moment, watching Jack and Sarah to be sure his two assistants have the job well in hand before nodding and turning his attention to her. She meets his gaze full-on with shoulders back and head held high. Everything about her screams self-confidence, but there’s a slight wariness in her blue eyes and she keeps tucking her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ears. “Have you practiced any Defense since your OWL?” he asks in as nonthreatening a voice as he can muster, given that he knows he’s about to be hexing her.

Jaw tightening visibly, Sam shakes her head.

“Okay. I’m not trying to insult you, just get a measure of where I can expect you to perform. You won’t be on the same level as the seven who are taking the actual class, and it’s possible you’ll be the same as these six because of being out of practice. Basics first. Put a shield up.”

Sam turns to look at her fellow students, and Remus shoots a weak stinging hex at her backside without hesitation. “Hey!” There’s shock and, surprisingly, respect on her face now.

“Nice shield,” he says mildly. “Shall we try that again?”

“Protego,” she incants as an answer, glaring at him. Remus suppresses a smile as he shoots progressively stronger stinging hexes at her. Behind her, Jack and Sarah are taking turns throwing their full power into dyeing charms to see how much gets through each student’s shield. Remus isn’t entirely certain why he decided on the stinging hex for Sam.

“Good enough,” Remus says, breaking the flow of his spells when he’s putting most of his power into them with no visible drain on Sam’s shield. “Now you try to break my shield.”

The smile that spreads across her face makes him wish he hadn’t stung her. “With whatever hex I prefer?”

“With a dyeing charm.” He hesitates, then capitulates. “Or a stinging hex, to be fair.”

He puts up a shield immediately and feels the impact of a silently-cast spell as soon as he does. “Fair’s fair, isn’t it, Tutor Lupin?”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“You pulled your punch the first time you got me,” she explains, and the look in her eye is eerily similar to the one James got before a good pranking duel.

“Bring the power, then.” He slides into his preferred dueling position, pleased when she takes a different but also common stance.

“Just breaking your shield, or do we get to have some fun?”

Remus glances over at the other students in the room, hurling their strongest hexes at Jack’s shield. “Try to break it, then we’ll see.”

“There is no try, only do,” she tells him with a grin. This time, she incants the stinging hex; almost all spells can be done more strongly when voiced. Remus is amazed to feel his shield strain, though it holds.

He recasts his shield, not missing the small gleam of triumph in her eyes. “Again. Shout it if you have to.” She does, and his shield strains almost to the point of cracking. “Use your best nonlethal spell that you know the counter to. Break through.” 

Sam’s eyes shut as she takes a deep breath, then she flies into a whirlwind of the fastest wandwork he’s ever see a student capable of. “Stupefy!” she shouts, and Remus feels his shield crack significantly. It isn’t completely broken, but it’s enough to let in a bit of the girl’s spell. He staggers back several steps, catching himself on the wall.

“Give me two half-power spells, and I guarantee you’ll need an Ennervate,” Sam tells him.

There’s time between spells to reinforce a shield. “Do it. Word of honor.”

“Defend yourself.” She grins at him in a way that would be mocking if he took himself too seriously but instead feels more like he’s back in school, facing down James Potter in a friendly duel.

“Ready when you are.”

A moment later, he’s blinking unconsciousness from his eyes and being pulled to his feet by Jack. The Gryffindor is shouting at Sam, who’s leaning smugly against a desk. Remus hushes the boy and cocks his head to examine his dueling partner. He’d felt small cracks from the first spell, but before he could fully reinforce the shield, he was out cold. She must have incredible control of her magic to slip it through the weakest parts of the shield only and not waste its power creating more cracks. Of the NEWT students, only Jack has enough raw power to truly break Remus’s shield, though the boy tends to wield it without finesse.

“Look at this list of spells,” Remus tells her, pulling a parchment from his pocket and enlarging it. “I’m going to check on the other two rooms. When I come back - ten minutes, give or take - I want you to demonstrate as many of these as you can.”

“Mostly fourth, fifth, and NEWT level Defense spells?” she asks, skimming the list quickly.

“Yes. I don’t care about power or fancy tricks. Just show me what you know how to do. Jack, stop glaring and let her look over the list in peace. Nobody in this room helps her or lets her look in a book."

“Do we have to cast spells from a list, too?” one of the students asks, and Remus nods.

“It’s the only way you’ll move from one group to the next. Consider it an entrance exam into the next highest level of tutoring.”

Sam looks up from the list at him. “Memory test or do I have the list to reference?”

“Oh, you can have the list in front of you,” Remus replies. “No time to think, though. If you can’t remember the incantation and wandwork when you come across something on the list, you’ll just say the name of the spell and go to the next one. Take this time to review how to cast each spell.”

“Somehow, that’s a yes both to the memory test and to having the list,” she responds, refocusing on the parchment as she takes a seat.

Remus assumes this means she doesn’t have any more questions and, after a questioning look at Sarah yields rolling eyes and an impatient, “We’re fine, sir,” he heads out of the classroom, where green sparks hover outside of the rooms to either side of his.

He checks on Elizabeth’s room first, giving the students pointers and testing individuals as his assistants request. Most of the retesting is for students with more raw power than the assistants working with them. Remus hasn’t told even his assistants that the raw power doesn’t matter to him at all, and he doesn’t intend to now, so he tests those students as though it’s just as important a factor as the other parts are. Too many people believe in raw power for him not to test it when dividing the groups, and it is something useful to know about his students. One student manages to break Remus’s shield in one blow just as cleanly as Jack can, but the boy is panting with effort after his spell.

“Word of advice, Hank,” Remus offers after conjuring the Gryffindor a glass of water. “Never show your limits like that unless it’s life or death.”

The boy nods and looks thoughtful, so Remus pats him on the back and leaves him with his water to mull things over. He pulls a sheaf of parchments from his pocket and hands them to Elizabeth with a reminder to give the students ten minutes to look over them and recover their magical power before demanding the testing begin. She’s kind enough not to tell him that she knows perfectly well how to follow the instructions they came up with just that morning.

However, she seems to have improved on the idea since then. Only one student is handed a parchment, and he’s sent into a part of the classroom sectioned off so that even Remus can’t read the words on the parchment, and he’s the one who wrote it.

“I’m going to ward off a section of the classroom to test them one at a time,” Cameron explains to Remus at a single questioning look. “Elizabeth is going to ward a place to keep those who haven’t done the testing yet. We figure it’ll take about five minutes to test each person, so we’ll just rotate them through and keep them separated that way.”

“Ward a place for those who have already finished, too,” Remus suggests.

“So they can watch but not comment?”

Remus shrugs. “That or not watch at all. How would you feel if your classmates got to watch you make mistakes?”

“Not so great, but I’d feel better if I then got to watch other classmates make the same mistakes.” Cameron pauses. “No, then it’s not fair for the ones going first and last. You’re right.”

“I’ll tell the other rooms so it’s the same for everyone. Elizabeth has the logic puzzles; the ones who have finished testing with you can start working on them, maybe.”

“Hmm. Then she and I need to see through the barriers we’re putting up, but the others don’t. They’re done after the logic puzzles?”

“Unless there’s anything you think I’ve missed.”

Cameron doesn’t have any other suggestions and begins the warding as Remus moves back into the hall. He glances at his watch; Sam has two minutes left to review the list before he needs to test her, so he hurries on to Daniel’s room to update him on the warding Elizabeth and Cameron are doing.

“I like it,” Daniel says quietly. “Hey, I have two students I need you to test for power, but the rest are ready for the list.”

He checks his watch again. One minute. “Have them wait until after the rest of their testing. Jack or I will take care of it then. I need to go test Sam on this list.”

“Sure.” Daniel hesitates, then gives Remus a curious look. “What’s on your mind?”

“Sam,” he answers honestly. “Have you … well, maybe not dueled with her, but ever done any kind of practical work with her?”

Daniel snorts. “We’re paired up in Arithmancy and Potions, but somehow I don’t think that’s the kind of practical work you were looking for.”

Remus grins back. “Yeah, not so much. She’s good, though, Daniel. She’s really good. I mean, I don’t know how much she knows and don’t expect it to be a lot, but she can wield her magic like a scalpel.”

“Really?” Daniel sounds vaguely shocked and no small bit impressed. “Little Samantha Carter?”

“I don’t know that I’d call her little to her face,” Remus responds.

“Don’t call her Samantha, either,” Daniel advises him.

“Good to know. But yes, really. She doesn’t have the raw power Jack does - she doesn’t even have the raw power you do - but that girl, that young woman I should say, has more control over her magic than a good many adult witches or wizards. Amazing finesse. How’d she get that good?”

Daniel shrugs, his eyebrows still raised more than Remus has seen before. “I have no idea. I didn’t realize she was that good. I mean, I know she usually gets a new spell pretty quickly, not long after me, but finesse?”

“She knocked me out in two Stupefies by cracking my shield with the first one and sending the second not against the shield to destroy it but through the cracks to hit me with its full force.”

Daniel’s mouth drops open. “That’s possible!?”

Remus grins at having caught a seventh year half blood Ravenclaw that much off guard. “Oh, yeah. It’s possible. It’s as rare as a tame Acromantula, but it’s possible.”

“You think she’ll teach me?”

Remus just laughs. “Get back to your students, Daniel. Get going on the list and the logic puzzles. I’ll be back.” He returns to his original room, where he watches Jack and Sarah for a moment before instructing them to get their students on the list and turning to Sam to start testing her.

“Let me get this straight,” she says as she drops her wand from a holster on her wand arm straight into her hand. The move isn’t nearly as smooth as Remus’s war-tested technique, but it’s better than his was in seventh year when James’s parents bought all his friends the fighting holsters. It brings back memories of nights spent shooting their wands around the dorm room, laughing riotously at their mistakes, until they could all release and cast quickly if not smoothly. None of them had worn their holsters to classes until all four of them could do it. The fact that it had been McGonagall’s class when they finally wore them, McGonagall whose jaw had dropped (a move Remus had never seen before and hasn’t seen since) when even Peter Pettigrew managed a quick transfiguration before she even saw him draw his wand … well, that had made the practice worth it entirely.

“Sorry, Sam,” he says, shaking his head to bring himself out of memories. “Say again?”

She eyes him for a moment before replying. “I was clarifying this test. I go down this list in order, cast what I know, and say the name of any spell I don’t know?”

“Yes, exactly. If you need to transfigure something, here’s a quill,” he says, pulling it from his pocket along with a shrunken dueling dummy. “And please don’t try to use any blasting curses on me; I know a very effective reflective shield. My friend here is happy to be the test subject. No need to show off your power, so just enough that I can see you cast it correctly.”

“The Animagus Revealing Charm,” Sam says, clearly starting on the list. Remus nods, completely unsurprised that she doesn’t know the Auror-level spell. The list is, for him, as much a suggestion of spells the students learn for their own protection in a Voldemort-infested world. He knows better than most how easy it is for wizards to be unregistered Animagi, and he knows that at least one Death Eater is unregistered and unknown to the Ministry as an Animagus.

Sam continues through the list without pausing for Remus’s thoughts. There aren’t really any surprises; she performs pretty much exactly the way he expected and is as frustrated as he expected at the number of spells she doesn’t know.

“If you took the OWL right now, you’d fail,” he tells her bluntly as she finishes the list, but he gives her a sympathetic look. “If you were in a duel … I think you’d stand a chance, but that doesn’t matter.”

“That’s all that matters,” she counters.

Okay, that’s true for the real world. “It doesn’t matter for the purposes of your tutoring. Not the beginning stages, at least. One more test. Do you know what a pencil is?”

“I’m Muggle-born,” she answers, and somehow he’s surprised by this information. Still, she’s been in school for six years and a few months, which is enough time to learn finesse if your magic is already inclined that way.

“Good. The first puzzle on this page will solve itself for you if you tap the play symbol - that triangle - with your pencil. To slow it down—“

“The turtle, and to speed it up, the rabbit,” she finishes for him, holding out a hand impatiently and almost snatching the pencil from him. “Can I just solve the others without watching? I used to do these for fun.”

Remus nods without a word and leaves her to it. Sarah is just starting on her second of six students to test the list with Jack watching those waiting and reading over the list. Remus teaches the one who’s finished with Sarah how to operate a pencil and the charmed parchment of logic puzzles. “Solve what you can,” he tells her seriously. “Most of you won’t be able to get them all. When you think you’ve done all you can do, flip to the last page and touch your pencil to the stop button - the square in a circle. You’ll be placed in tutoring groups not based on your OWL score, which is over a year old anyway, but by how well you did in today’s tests. For this, accuracy matters more than anything else, then the amount you manage to puzzle through, then the amount of time it took.”

The young woman nods seriously and bends over the parchment, carefully pressing the play symbol with her pencil and watching the logic puzzle intently. Remus smiles and leaves the room quietly to check on the others. No sparks hang in the hallways this time, but he wanders into Daniel’s room, where the young man is just finishing up with his second list-test.

“If you want to strength-test these two, they’re ready for you,” Daniel says, motioning for the next student in line to come to him for testing. “Evan and John.”

“Thanks.” Remus wards a corner of the room to block sight and sound so their exercise doesn’t distract the others. “Evan? Would you like to go first?”

“I will,” the boy with absurdly messy black hair replies. Remus is kind of surprised to find a second person in one day, in one class of students, who reminds him of James. “I did the list before Evan, so I’ve had more time to recover my strength.”

“Thanks,” Evan replies even as Remus agrees to the plan.

John steps back until the standard dueling distance is between him and Remus and raises his wand. “So, same way they were doing it? I shield, you throw a dye charm at me?”

“We’ll start there,” Remus agrees, ready to improvise as he did with Sam if necessary. “Ready?”

“Waiting on you.”

Remus grins and throws his strongest dye charm, not surprised when John doesn’t change color. It’s never been his strongest spell, so he doesn’t stand a chance using it against a strong student. “Any strain on your shield?”

“A bit,” John admits, “but not much. If I didn’t reinforce, you might break it on the second casting, but I don’t think so.”

“I’m going to switch to a stronger spell. Would you rather be unconscious or stung?”

John grins. “Use your strongest spell, Tutor Lupin.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Remus laughs. “My strongest offensive spells are all a bit lethal for a classroom. Ready? Stupefy!”

There’s no visible effect, but John frowns. “On a second casting, you’d definitely break through and hit me at least partially."

“I shield, you cast. Dye first.”

John casts silently, and Remus swears when his shield cracks. It’s holding together, but only barely. A first year could take it out decisively. After a _silent_ cast. He drops it altogether and recasts rather than just strengthening it. “Voice the spell this time."

Damn. He’s not the solid dark blue he would be from a direct hit, but his shield is completely gone and a light blue covers him head to toe. The guy’s strong. “John, what House are you and what do you plan to do after school?”

Both of the boys raise an eyebrow. “Hufflepuff and Auror, if I can pass the Defense NEWT off your tutoring,” John replies.

“Gryffindor and … Ministry work,” Evan offers without prompting. The slight hesitation intrigues Remus. It’s the same hesitation he heard when he met an Unspeakable in his seventh year, and he curses his lycanthropy yet again for making his dream job impossible in Bagnold’s - and now Fudge’s - Ministry. He sends Evan a quick nod of understanding, hoping the boy knows what Remus isn’t going to say aloud. The young man, he corrects himself. They may be students, but all of the seventh years are adults, and he needs to try to treat them as such, including how he thinks of them.

“I knew two Aurors,” Remus offers in a moment of surprising unguardedness. “You’re as strong now as they were mid-training. Have you talked to anyone in the Auror division?”

John shakes his head. “Didn’t seem to be much point without a Defense NEWT.”

“You’ll be a damn good Auror,” Remus tells him, and it feels more like a promise.

Red sparks fly through Remus’s warding, and he brings them down with the loud crash that accompanies such hurried unwarding. “Daniel?”

“His spell bounced off the dummy and rebounded onto him,” the prefect replies from where he’s kneeling over a student in full uniform including a Slytherin tie. “I didn’t recognize the incantation. Ennervate isn’t working.”

“John, go get Madam Pomfrey. Wait!” he calls as he joins Daniel on the floor beside the unconscious student. He sniffs the air, then spreads a hand flat on the boy’s chest. Dark magic. “Tell her to Floo Professor Snape as well. Dark magic.”

“There’s nothing dark on the list,” Daniel protests.

“Yes, well, there are a lot of vague things. Blasting hex, Daniel. There are four incantations I can think of off the top of my head that count as a blasting hex, and one is dark. Not this spell, though.”

Daniel shifts a bit to grab the list. “We were at unlocking spells.”

Remus shakes his head and stands. “You know how to monitor vitals?” When the prefect nods, he continues. “Do so until Poppy arrives. Tell her anything you can remember of the incantation, tell her I know it’s dark, tell her you were at unlocking spells. Repeat it to Professor Snape when he arrives. And Daniel….” He hesitates long enough that Daniel looks away from the vital signs monitoring charm he’d cast to meet Remus’s eyes. “I trust Professor Snape with my life. I won’t tell you to … allow him access … but if he asks for it, I would grant it in your shoes.”

Daniel looks at him in confusion but nods, clearly thinking it over. Remus hopes it won’t come to Snape needing to see the spell cast via Legilimency to counter it, but if it does, Daniel will understand Remus’s message then. And hopefully he won’t decipher it if the situation doesn’t arise.

“Sue! Take over testing. Amanda, keep on eye on finished and waiting students alike. I’m going to test Evan. There’s no point in starting the final test before this situation is dealt with. Please remind your students that not everybody knows the counters to less common spells.” He waits to make sure all three of his assistants in the room acknowledge his words before striding back to the corner and quickly reestablishing the same wards as before. “Ready?”

“Will Peter be okay?”

Remus nods. “He’s perfectly stable now, just unconscious. I have every confidence in Madam Pomfrey and Professor Snape. I’m going to cast in a moment whether you’re shielded or not.”

“Right.” Evan nods firmly as though to himself, casts a shield, then nods at Remus. “If you want to skip over the dye spell, I don’t mind.”

“Stupefy!” Remus casts without hesitation. Evan stumbles back a couple of steps but grins when he looks up.

“I’d be unconscious on the second cast,” he reports without prompting. “I’m not as strong as John or Jack, but I think I’m stronger than anyone else in the school.”

Remus can keep Jack from dyeing him, though it’s a close thing. “Your turn.”

“Dye charm?”

“Yes, please.”

Evan’s charm is strong for sure, but Remus’s shield holds it all out as it does Jack’s. He examines his shield before dropping it. “You’re very close to being as strong as Jack O’Neill. I’d like to talk to you another day about your future Ministry work. I had an interesting experience in my seventh year that almost led me down that path.”

“You’re a great teacher, from everything I hear,” Evan offers awkwardly, and Remus laughs.

“I try not to live with regrets, and I’m very pleased with what I do. I’d still like to share with you what I learned from my experience. Things may have changed over the years, but it could still be of value to you.”

Evan smiles sincerely. “I’d like that.”

Remus returns the smile before taking down the wards more carefully this time. It’s a bit slower, but it doesn’t disrupt the rest of the room. Poppy and Snape are both there, and the Slytherin - Peter, Evan had called him - is sitting up and frowning.

“Daniel, everything under control?”

“Yes, sir.”

He hesitates, then nods firmly to himself. “Darker spells are permissible for the list, but only if they accomplish the purpose,” he tells his assistant.

“Lupin.” Snape looks Remus up and down before turning back to his student. “A small miracle that a former Gryffindor thought to call the one person who could help.”

“You’re welcome,” Remus replies evenly, containing his laughter when Snape’s whole body freezes for about half a second. “I’ll be back in Jack’s room if you need anything,” he announces to the room at large as he leaves, wishing he knew how to make his robes billow like Snape does.

When he returns to his original room, Jack and Sarah are each testing a student with only one waiting to be tested. He moves to run through the list with her when Jack sets a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, you’re back! Can you explain the logic parchments to the rest of them? I’ll test Sherry.”

He agrees easily, running through the same explanation for pencil operation and the parchment charms as he had for Sam and the earlier student, both of whom are still working diligently as expected. He knows Sarah and Jack both could have explained this part of the testing and wonders why they didn’t. “For this part of your testing, getting it correct matters most of all, then how many puzzles you finish, then how long it takes. Take your time and don’t answer the puzzle if you aren’t sure of it. I expect very few of you to get all of them."

“Done,” Sam announces from the other side of the room, and Remus raises an eyebrow at her.

“Go ahead when you’re ready,” he tells the group. “Jack, Sarah, do me a favor and take this test, too.” Sam doesn’t have the spell knowledge she needs to join their group, but he has a feeling once she realizes a few dozen incantations are all that stand between her and the NEWT students, he’s going to need a baseline score on the logic puzzles. He’ll have to get Daniel to do them, too; the boy is really getting good at them and, as another Ravenclaw, might be the best competition to hold Sam against.

Sam’s test grades itself for him, and it’s perfect. No mistakes on the final, no mistakes made during solving, and in the fastest solving category he’d created for the test. Three solid green vertical lines in the top right hand corner of the parchment. He pokes it with his wand and coaxes a number from within the enchantments; his mouth falls open in surprise. Five puzzles ranging in difficulty enough that Remus’s own solving time was thirty-four minutes, and this feisty Ravenclaw had finished in twenty-seven minutes.

“Stick around?” he asks her, and she narrows her eyes before shrugging. “Better yet, come with me.”

There’s one set of green sparks hanging outside the room where Daniel, Amanda, and Sue are working, and he sighs. “Could you go to the left for me? Ask Elizabeth to take the logic test and Cameron to supervise and answer questions. I’ll meet you back here in a few minutes.” Sam nods and sets off that way, pausing in the doorway of the room to watch whatever’s happening. Remus decides that she’ll be fine and heads to the room on the right.

“What’s happened this time?” he asks with as weary and bored a voice as he can manage, but Amanda just laughs at his effort.

“Burning spell on the list. There weren’t flames, and the dummy looks like that.” She points to a dueling dummy pushed into a corner of the room, and he grins.

“That’s a pass. Grey-dark magic, more subtle than any light burning spells, extremely effective. Very handy little spell. Anything else?”

“Kavanaugh - the Slytherin boy who knocked himself out trying to unlock a dummy? He finished the rest of his list without incident.”

Remus nods to himself, pleased the young man hadn’t hurt himself. “Do you think you can take over testing and keep an eye on this batch at the same time?” he asks, gesturing to the students working on logic puzzles. “I need Sue.”

“Sure.” Amanda sends green sparks over to where Sue is running down the spell list with a Hufflepuff Remus doesn’t know. “She’ll come over after that one.”

“Great.” Remus heads across the room to the small group waiting to be tested, figuring he has several minutes to spare. “Daniel, how’s it going?”

The Ravenclaw smiles at him. “I have the easy job right now.”

“So I see. When you’re done lazing around with it, I’d like you to take the logic puzzle test, too. I realized I need some controls from your class.”

“No problem. Did you need Sue? She’s looking at you.”

He winces dramatically and jogs back over to the logic group, noting distantly that Amanda has already moved to the spell testing area and taken the next student in line. “Sue, you feel up for a duel?”

“With you?” She looks an interesting combination of excited and terrified.

“Come with me,” he says instead of answering, pleased when she follows him out of the room without further questions. Sam is leaning against the door of her original room; she heads inside as they approach and looks questioningly at Sue but doesn’t comment.

Jack and Sarah are still diligently working on the logic puzzles alongside their students. Remus decides it’s best not to disturb them if possible, so he wards a portion of the room against stray spells and sound.

“I want the two of you to duel,” he tells them, pleased with their surprised reactions. “Neither of you hold back at all. Nothing lethal, illegal, or causing lasting damage. Damage, by the way,” he adds for Sam’s benefit, “does not include things that don’t cause pain or physical harm.”

Sue laughs. “The first time I met him, I spent half the class period with tentacles instead of hands. I have no doubt he would have left me that way if I hadn’t figured a way out of it.”

“Sue.”

She rolls her eyes at Remus. “Alright, fine, if _Cameron_ hadn’t figured a way out of it for all of us.”

He nods and smiles. Credit where credit’s due. “Any questions?”

“Ready when you are.” Sam slides into her dueling stance with a little grin playing on her lips.

“Let’s do this, raven.” Sue’s dueling stance is more of just standing there, but Remus has seen her in action and isn’t fooled.

Remus gives them a countdown and leans against a nearby bit of wall to watch. This duel isn’t about who wins; it’s about finding out if Sam’s talent for logic puzzles translates into decent responses in real-world situations or not. As he watches her duck, twist, and otherwise evade most of the spells Sue sends her way rather than wasting time and energy blocking, he thinks she might have what it takes. The spells start to get interesting as more of them land their targets - the girls are both getting physically tired much faster than Remus would prefer. Sam’s short blonde hair cascades to the floor and keeps growing; she casts a feather-light charm on it instead of countering it before throwing something Remus doesn’t recognize at her opponent. Sue doesn’t seem to recognize it either, if the wide eyes as she sidesteps are any indication, but she dodges straight into the path of another spell that turns her wand hand into a fish. As Sue’s wand clatters to the floor, Sam gives Remus a smug look, only to stare in surprise a moment later as she’s hit with a first-year petrifying spell.

Sue looks down at her fish hand in surprise. “I’m glad that worked,” she comments, picking up her wand with her right hand.

“Wandless magic through a fish-hand?” Remus asks. He’d missed that moment, too busy being impressed by Sam’s transfiguration and opening his mouth to remind her that the duel wasn’t over until someone couldn’t retaliate.

“Yeah.”

“Why wouldn’t it work?”

Sue looks thoughtful. “Well, it’s not my real hand, is it? So I thought it might not be able to channel my magic.” She points her wand at Sam, then yields it and turns to Remus. “Would you reverse that? I’m not sure of my control with my off hand.”

Remus releases Sam from her petrification and offers her a hand to get up from the floor where she’d fallen once frozen.

“It is your real hand,” Sam replies as soon as she regains her feet. “Transfiguration, not a switching spell. If I’d known you could do wandless magic, I would have followed it with a stunner.”

“Never assume your opponent is down,” Sue and Remus reply in chorus, then they both laugh.

“It’s one of his favorite things to remind us,” Sue explains to Sam. “Even if I couldn’t do wandless magic, I could have picked up my wand with my right hand and cast at you - sure, it would have been less powerful and less focused, but it could still knock you out.”

“She also could have rushed you bodily and punched you in the face,” Remus adds.

Sam looks confused, but Sue takes the initiative to explain to her. “Tutor Lupin is all about real-world situations, not classroom duels. I wouldn’t punch you in a duel, but I would run at you and try to take your wand away in one of his duels. Outside of Hogwarts, if someone starts hexing you on the street or something - that’s what he wants to prepare us for. You can never assume your opponent is out of the game until you’ve made sure of it.”

“Stunning, petrifying….” Sam raises one eyebrow in silent question.

“Tying them up, putting them in a cage - though be careful for wandless magic with that - what else, Professor?”

“Merlin, I’m not a professor anymore,” Remus grouses half-sincerely, but he thinks for a moment before adding, “Transfiguring the entire person into something harmless like a mouse and putting it in a cage. Sticking them to the ceiling, if you’re careful to stay out from where they might hit you with a wandless spell. Sticking their hands together without the wand, because almost everyone who can do wandless magic can only send it through their palm. Disabling them with a tongue-twisting spell, though watch out for wordless magic, so either take their wand away as well - I’ve only heard of three wizards who can do wandless wordless magic - or use something that makes them incapable of focusing a thought well enough for wordless magic.”

“Like a tickling spell?”

He nods at Sue. “That would probably do it.”

“Rematch?” Sam asks hopefully, but Remus shakes his head.

“No, I’ve seen everything I needed to see.”

“But sir!”

He raises his eyebrows at her, and she subsides with a muttered apology. “Your placement depends entirely on you. I want to retest you a week from today on that list of spells, and I’ll have you duel again with someone different. You’ll either end up with the NEWT students or with the next highest group. You’re exempt from helping your classmates this week, but you can ask any of them for help.”

Sam nods firmly. “I’ll look forward to joining the NEWT students next week, then.”

Merlin, she reminds him so much of James. So confident not only in her ability to focus and learn but in her innate magical abilities, too. James was confident in the sheer power in his spells, and Sam is confident in the flexibility of hers. James always asked for a rematch if he lost a duel, sure he could overpower his opponent after watching them once, never considering that they had also watched him and learned his style. He had almost always been right, which didn’t temper his confidence. Sam, learning the rules of the duel and eager to jump right back in … well, he’s certain she could beat Sue in a second match now, but that’s not all he needs from her before she joins his top tutoring group.

“Sir?”

Remus shakes himself out of memories and thoughts. “Yeah, yeah, next week.”

Sam frowns at him. “Are you okay there?”

Her inflection is like James on the day after a full moon in the time between them learning about his wolf side and becoming animagi. He swallows hard. “I … I will be,” he answers as honestly as he can.

“What can we do to help?” Sue asks, looking equally concerned, and he swallows again, hating the lump in his throat.

“Nothing,” he says, a lot more sharply than he intended as he draws his wand. A few quick slashes bring down his dueling barriers with an audible clang as they collapse, and he leaves the room without another word, looking in on the other two groups working on their logic puzzles before finding an empty room and pulling the door shut behind him. He slides to the floor and pulls his knees up to his chest. Five minutes. Just five minutes of grief, then he’ll go back to the students. Five minutes now, and the rest of his grief can wait the two days until Halloween.

Instead, he only gets two minutes before the door cracks open just enough for someone to slide in. He gathers his grief back in, stuffs it into the small box he carries inside his heart, and is about to push himself up to his feet when Daniel joins him on the floor.

“I’m fine,” he tells the boy, surprised at how rough and not-fine his voice sounds.

“Okay,” Daniel replies easily, not leaving his new position. They’re sitting side by side, leaning back against the wall, though Daniel’s legs are stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankle rather than pulled up to his chest like Remus’s still are. “Jack’s collecting the puzzles as people finish and sending them back to their common rooms. He said we - that is, the seven of us - will let them know in a couple of days what group they’re in and what they need to start working on in their spare time. I told him to add that they can start with whatever they think they need the most help with.”

“Sounds good.” Remus takes a deep breath, holds it for several seconds, and lets it out slowly. “I should—“

“Stay right here and let Jack handle it? Funny, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” Daniel says with a small smile. “Look, I know we’re just students like them, but we know you and we can help you. Tell me that’s not exactly what you were going to do when they finished the puzzles.”

He shrugs. It is exactly what he was going to do, down to having Jack be the one running among the three rooms. “You’re too much like me.”

“Honestly, sir, I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Remus shuts his eyes and drops his head down onto his knees. “This doesn’t really seem like the kind of situation where I’m a tutor or a sir,” he tells his trousers.

“Would you rather I call you Mr Lupin?”

He actually shudders at that. The only people who call him that these days, or really ever since he graduated from Hogwarts, are the Ministry employees who keep track of werewolves. The title doesn’t really have good associations for him anymore. “No. Never. Remus, though….”

There’s a long silence, and Remus finds himself rubbing his cheek against the fabric of his trousers, focusing on the slight drag of wool on skin. “Do you want to talk, Remus?” the boy asks from beside him, and Remus’s breath hitches a bit.

“You are … you’re exactly like me. Minus the whole—“ He cuts himself off quickly. The Board of Governors had, when they allowed him entrance to Hogwarts to tutor the Grangers, written up protocols he had to follow to keep the students safe on full moons, but they’d quietly put the documents in a file instead of publishing them. The staff all knows he’s a werewolf, and of course the Grangers do, but no other students have been told.

Daniel laughs softly and leans the slightest bit toward Remus to bump their shoulders together. “Yeah, minus that whole werewolf thing.” Remus tenses, and the boy adds, “I know the seven of us - and Sam - all know, and none of us care. I’ve read your safety guidelines, I trust you to follow them, and I checked up on your record through the public Ministry registry. Close to thirty years as a werewolf and not one attack? It’s very impressive.”

“Thanks,” Remus says automatically, firmly not thinking about the one attack that was never documented thanks to Albus Dumbledore. He’s still trying to reconcile the dangerous and manipulative Dumbledore of today with the kind Dumbledore who let a werewolf attend his school, but not reporting an attack strikes him now as dangerous and manipulative. How he managed to get Snape not to tell is a mystery probably stuffed full of manipulation. The way Remus even now, after knowing Harry’s story, feels a bit beholden to the man is … well, it’s not good.

“Sam seemed pretty impressed with the logic puzzles,” Daniel says after a moment. “She said she could tell from the duel how you were using them. Seemed excited to have dueled, too.”

“She did well,” Remus said, unsurprised when his voice slides more to the rough side again. “She doesn’t know the spells that my sevens do - er, that your group does - but she has all the other skills.”

“I guarantee not a one of us would mind being called your sevens,” Daniel tells him, bumping shoulders again. “You like Sam?”

Remus shift enough to put his eyes directly on his knees, feeling the first tears drip out to stain his trousers. “She reminds me of someone.”

This time, instead of bumping shoulders, Daniel leaves them touching, and Remus finds himself leaning into the contact.

“James Potter,” he barely breathes.

“Did you say James Potter?”

He nods and lifts his head from his knees, finally opening his eyes. He blinks in the afternoon sunlight filtering in through the windows as he turns to face the boy at his side, pulling back from the shoulder contact to see him better. “He was one of my best friends.”

“Is that how you ended up tutoring the Grangers?”

“In part, yes.” A smile steals across his face at the thought of Harry Granger, even as another set of tears slide down his face for James Potter. He’s glad Harry kept James as his middle name. He understands how important it was to the boy to change his last name to that of his new parents, but he selfishly loves that James is still a part of Harry's name.

Daniel shifts a bit, and Remus leans against his shoulder again, drawing strength from the studious boy so like him. “So Sam Carter is like James Potter. How?”

“James and — well, James figured out that I was a werewolf. He … The way she duels … He was always pulling pranks … I’m not telling this very well.”

Daniel’s shoulder moves against his own in a shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t need a clean story. Tell it however you need to.”

In the end, it’s four hours of disjointed stories in which Remus slowly loses the urge to hold things back. He compares Jack to Sirius, the Sirius Remus knew in school rather than the Black who betrayed them all as adults. He shares Peter Pettigrew’s school days as well as his extreme hope that Amanda, who reminds him of his boyhood friend, doesn’t meet the same kind of untimely end. He tells Daniel about growing up isolated and monstrous and then finding friends at school, surprised when Daniel shares his own story of a lonely childhood followed by foster care in the muggle world.

“I stayed in Diagon Alley last summer, but up until then I’ve had to go back to my muggle foster parents. They still don’t know what kind of school I go to.”

Remus nods. “Your parents … Was it war-related?”

“I think so.” Daniel looks away from Remus. “They weren’t fighters, but they were doing research in the Department of Mysteries. One of their colleagues had a containment spell go wrong when they were working nearby. He was holding some formless dark magic, and it … it looked like it fell right on them. It took them two hours to get the magic off my parents, but they were dead. Three days later, just a few hours after my grandfather refused to take me in, Harry Potter ended the war.

“I hated him for a while. For not doing it sooner, so my parents could have stopped their research or at least slowed down enough that better safety precautions could have been in effect. I hated him for saving everyone but my parents. I was sent away the next morning to the muggle foster care system - they were looking for me when my mother’s death was recorded in the muggle world but mine wasn’t, and I guess there weren’t a lot of people eager to take in the son of two people hunted by Death Eaters. It wasn’t until I started at Hogwarts that I learned his parents had died, too.”

Remus doesn’t know what to say, so he just reaches over and ruffles Daniel’s hair like he does Harry’s when the younger boy is upset.

“Sometimes I wonder if I should talk to him,” Daniel continues. “Not to tell him about my parents, and definitely not about how I used to feel, but just to let him know that I understand missing your parents. I don’t know, though.”

“You remember your parents, though,” Remus points out quietly, and Daniel turns to him with wide eyes.

“Harry doesn’t remember his parents? Not at all?”

“Not at all.”

Daniel shakes his head. “That’s … so much worse than I thought. And I mean, I’ve spoken to him and his sister, so I know at least he has good parents now, and he has you, which counts a lot more knowing how well you knew his dad. But I … I know how to read between the lines, since I’ve been there, and he didn’t have a very good life between the Potters and the Grangers, and that was several years. I don’t think anyone else has caught on to it except the fifth year prefects - you know about the first night here? - and I don’t want to stir up old memories and hurt him.”

“I think you could tell him that you also lost your parents during the war and about the muggle foster home. Tell him you’re there if he ever wants to talk, but don’t push him.”

The boy nods slowly. “He’s still pretty fragile, isn’t he.”

“He’s still learning how to trust and feel safe,” Remus replies, then freezes. “Er—“

“I didn’t hear anything,” Daniel responds quickly. “Harry’s still … new to life with the Grangers. That’s what I heard.”

Remus forces himself to relax, and his fingers card through Daniel’s hair again.

“Harry likes this?”

“The petting? Yeah, but only in private.”

Daniel snorts. “Of course only in private. You hardly have to tell me that.”

They’re interrupted by Daniel’s stomach growling loudly, and Remus casts a quick Tempus. Dinner is long over. “It looks like we’re headed to the kitchens.”

“Sure.” Daniel stands and offers a hand to help Remus to his feet. As Remus brushes off his bum, Daniel draws his wand and says a few charms Remus doesn’t recognize, but the effect is clear - the boy shows no signs of having cried or talked about anything more distressing than the weather.

“Can you do that on me?” he blurts, then winces at the clear emotion in his voice.

“Yeah.” The same spells are uttered, and Remus feels a bit of a tingling on his skin as they settle. It’s not a glamour; the slight swelling around his eyes goes down as though its a minor healing spell, and it probably is. “Ready, Remus? Or are you Tutor Lupin again?”

Remus shakes his head. This whole switching names thing is going to be a headache he just doesn’t have the energy for right now. “I don’t care."

“Yeah, that’s still Remus,” Daniel declares. “Come on. I don’t know where the kitchens are, so—“

The other six NEWT students and Sam are all sitting in the corridor, looking up from a game of Exploding Snap when Daniel pulls the classroom door open. There’s a long silence until the cards suddenly explode, and Cameron swears colorfully as his sleeve catches on fire. He looks cautiously at Remus, but he only has eyes for Sam, Amanda, and Jack.

“Did you say kitchens?” Jack says, and the way he perks up at the thought of food is so much like Sirius that Remus has to resist the urge to walk over and hug the young man.

“Yeah, we kind of missed dinner,” Daniel says.

“So did we,” Sarah tells them. “Mind if we join you?”

Remus looks around at his seven and Sam - his eight, maybe - and decides not to ask if they heard everything he said. The way Amanda pats his back says she noticed at least something, and Jack’s grin as he leads the way to the kitchens, just like Sirius when he could show off his knowledge of something Remus thought he’d found out first…. Remus feels a smile on his face: some mixture of grief and melancholy for his school friends and pleasure and gratitude for the company of his students, at least of some of whom he now counts as friends as well.

“Do we all call you Remus now, or is that just for Daniel?”

Remus laughs at the smirk on Elizabeth’s face and sets a hand on her shoulder. “It’s for all my friends,” he answers sincerely, and he’ll let each of them decide for themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who haven't read Harry Granger but want to start here: Harry Potter was adopted at a young age by the Granger family; Hermione Granger is his sister. They are now in their first year at Hogwarts in Ravenclaw House. Remus Lupin tutors them in Defense, History of Magic, and muggle subjects. About a week before this story starts, Quirrell exposed himself as a vessel for the Dark Lord, and Voldemort was seen by Snape, McGonagall, and first-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Quirrell is in St Mungo's Hospital. Albus Dumbledore and Remus Lupin are sharing the temporary teaching of Defense at the request of the Hogwarts Board of Governors until a permanent teacher can be found.


End file.
